Are you wondering which language is the most difficult? Linguists believe that a clear answer to this question has not yet been found.
It all depends on three key criteria:
- 1. The native language of the learner of foreign languages is as complex as they differ from the native.
- 2. Qualifications An experienced linguist will cope with any language much easier than a person who has nothing to do with linguistics.
- 3. Language environment - the language environment is learned much faster than outside it. That's why best way language learning is regular communication with those for whom it is native. Well, the most effective method- learn a language while living in a country where it is widely used.
Russian speakers usually have a very hard time learning languages that do not belong to the Indo-European language family: Uralic (Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian), Turkic (Yakut, Turkish, Uzbek), Dravidian (Tamil, Telugu), Afroasian (Hebrew, Arabic, Somali) . The highest degree of complexity is represented by languages North Caucasus(Chechen, Kabardian, Abkhazian), languages of Southeast Asia (Thai, Chinese, Khmer), languages of "Black" Africa (Zulu, Swahili, Wolof), languages of Oceania (Maori, Hawaiian), languages of American Indians (Quechua, Cherokee, Mayan).
The most difficult of the common languages are Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Arabic. It has been proven that the human brain perceives Chinese and Arabic differently than other languages. For native speakers of these languages, both hemispheres are active when reading and writing, while for other people only one hemisphere works in such a situation. Hence, learning these unique languages helps develop the brain.
Korean, Japanese and Chinese are difficult even for native speakers. In Japan, for example, schooling lasts 12 years and half of that time is devoted to math and Japanese. To pass the exams, a student must learn about 1850 characters, but to understand a newspaper article about 3000.
Rating of the most difficult languages in the world
In this list, we have included common languages, as well as less common ones, which are spoken only by small isolated tribes.
Chinese
The basis of writing is very ancient hieroglyphs. There are more than 85 thousand of them in total, but not all of them are actively used. Many of them are found only in the monuments of ancient literature. Among them is the hieroglyph "se", which means "talkative" and consists of 64 lines. But modern Chinese characters cannot be called simple either. For example, the hieroglyph "nan" means "stuffy nose" and is represented by 36 dashes. In Chinese, there are practically no common words with European languages. However, many people who have mastered and fallen in love with the Chinese language consider hieroglyphs not difficult, but logical and incredibly beautiful.
Arab
Many letters have 4 different spellings. The present tense has 13 forms. Another difficulty is dialects. In Egypt, they speak a language that differs from Moroccan and literary Arabic, just as Spanish differs from French and Latin.
Japanese
There are three writing systems. In addition, 2 syllabaries are used: for borrowed words - katana, and for suffixes and grammatical particles hiragana.
Tuyuka
This unusual language is spoken by Indians in the Amazon basin. One word here can mean a whole phrase. Special verb endings give the listener information from where the speaker learned what he is talking about. That is, if you say "mom cooked dinner", then you should add "I know this because I saw it." As you can see, in the Amazon basin they are very sensitive to the reliability of the source of information.
Hungarian
It is on the list of the most difficult languages in the world because it has 35 cases. Vowels are pronounced in a specific way - deep in the throat. Therefore, Hungarian is also difficult to pronounce.
Basque
It retained very ancient concepts. For example, the word "ceiling" in it literally means "the roof of the cave." Suffixes and prefixes are used to form new words. Not only the verb ending changes, but also the beginning. Lots of dialect options. Due to this, there are about 500 thousand words in the Basque language dictionary.
Finnish
It has 15 cases, and more than a hundred conjugations and personal forms of the verb. Add to this the variety of suffixes, the alternation of consonants and mysterious post-syllables - and it already begins to seem to a confused beginner that he has taken up the most difficult language in the world. But there are many pleasant aspects in learning Finnish: the stress falls only on the first syllable, the words are written as they are heard, the concept of gender is absent altogether.
Estonian
In this language, there are as many as 12 cases, in addition, many words mean several different concepts.
Polish
In grammar, there are even more exceptions than rules. There are only 7 cases, but it's hard to figure them out. Usually people first learn to understand colloquial Polish and only then delve into the cases. Also, the Poles practically do not understand those who speak their language with an accent. By the way, if some Polish word seems very familiar to you, be careful - most likely, it means not at all what you first thought.
And then there is Eskimo with its 63 present tense forms, Haida with 70 prefixes, Chippewa with 6000 verb forms. All of them challenge each other for the title of "the most difficult language in the world."
In fact, any difficulty ratings are rather conditional. For example, English is considered relatively easy, but many people study it all their lives and still cannot boast of impressive results. There are cases when people easily mastered Chinese, but experienced difficulties with “easy” Spanish. They admire Chinese, which has neither tenses nor conjugations, but Spanish grammar makes them confused. Experienced teachers say: it all depends on how passionate you are about learning a particular language. To master it, you will have to make it an important part of your life, get used to thinking about it and feeling it. If you are very interested, then any language will be up to you.
There is a myth that the Russian language is one of the most difficult in the world. However, in order to write a short summary about yourself in English, it will take a couple of months of training, but if you repeat this trick with Polish or Hungarian, then you will have to master them for almost a year. So what is the most difficult language in the world? Today we will remember the 10 most difficult of all existing.
We have compiled our list from 10 to 1, where 10th place is the easiest of the difficult ones, the place belongs to the most difficult language to learn.
We present you with a descending list: Icelandic, Polish, Basque, Estonian, Navajo, Japanese, Hungarian, Tuyuka, Arabic, Chinese. Today we will talk about three of them.
The most difficult language in the world, 10th
The simplest of the complex languages was Icelandic, which retained words from ancient times. At least in Europe no one else uses them.
This language cannot be thoroughly learned without communicating with its native speakers, since transcription is not able to convey the sounds that Icelanders use.
To make it completely clear to you what we have just written about, just try to pronounce this word: Eyyafjallajökull. This is the name of one of the Do you want to learn this language?
The most difficult language in the world, 5th
There are three types of it: hieroglyphs, katakana and hiragana. And even in the very manner of writing, the Japanese distinguished themselves - they write from right to left, in a column. Local students were especially unlucky, because in order to get a diploma of higher education, you need to know 15,000 hieroglyphs.
In terms of complexity, Chinese is rightfully in the first place, but this does not prevent it from being considered the most common on the planet.
This language contains 87,000 hieroglyphs, although you can communicate with only 800, and someone who knows 3,000 hieroglyphs will be able to read newspapers.
The problem is that the Chinese there are more than 10 dialects, and writing can be both in a column and horizontally, in a European way.
Today you learned about the most difficult languages in the world, the list of which would be incomplete without some kind of Slavic dialect. Unfortunately or fortunately, this turned out to be not Russian, but Polish. It turns out that his grammar has not so much rules as exceptions to them.
The most difficult peoples - Polish
Our advice to those wishing to learn Polish thoroughly: start simple spoken language, and only when you master it, you can understand the logic of grammar. Suppose there are 7 cases in this language, and it is possible to understand how they are used only in practice.
The alphabet consists of 32 letters, but many of them are pronounced in two or three versions, in different ways. This is especially interesting when the Poles pronounce the letter "l" as "v".
Therefore, we especially try to protect you from trying to understand Polish only from familiar words. In this country, our Russian words can have a completely different meaning.
If you don't want to rack your brains over complex languages, study European ones. They say that the brain of polyglots is much better developed, that their thinking and abilities are more perfect, but the main thing is not yet learning foreign words and pronunciation features.
Start with English, and then maybe get to Chinese.
Learning new languages opens up a huge number of additional opportunities and perspectives. Some languages are easier to learn, others have to sweat.
And there are those that can only be mastered by a very purposeful, patient and diligent person. Are you exactly like that? Well, then here are 25 languages that are ready to challenge you and test your nerves!
25. Tagalog
The Austronesian language, Tagalog, is spoken by about a quarter of the Filipino population. Due to the complex grammatical rules and non-traditional sentence structure, it is quite difficult to master it.
24. Navajo
It is one of the southern Athabaskan languages. Navajo is common in the southwestern United States. It is spoken by 120 to 170 thousand people. Navajo has nothing to do with Romano-Germanic or Latin languages. The lack of common ground makes it difficult to study it. In Navajo writing, as a rule, it is transmitted in the Latin alphabet.
23. Norwegian
The national language of Norway is one of the main languages in the Nordic Council. Norwegian belongs to the North Germanic group of languages and is mutually intelligible with Swedish, Danish and other Scandinavian dialects (such as Icelandic or Faroese, for example).
22. Persian
Refers to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is used mainly in Afghanistan and Iran, Tajikistan and other countries under Persian influence. In total, about 110 million people communicate on it around the world.
21. Indonesian
For many centuries, it has been considered the main business language throughout the Indonesian archipelago. Indonesian is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world.
20. Dutch
This West Germanic language is spoken by people in the Netherlands, Suriname and Belgium, parts of Europe and the USA. To date, Dutch has official status in Curaçao, Aruba, Sint Maarten. The language is closely related to English and German, but Dutch does not use the umlauts of the latter as grammatical markers.
19. Slovenian
Belongs to the group of South Slavic languages. Slovene is spoken by more than 2.5 million people around the world, most of whom still live in Slovenia. This language is one of the 24 official working languages recognized in the EU.
18. Afrikaans
Natives of Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe communicate in Afrikaans. It is considered an offshoot of several different Dutch dialects. So Afrikaans can rightfully be considered a child of the Dutch language.
17. Danish
Official language of Denmark. More than 6 million people communicate on it. Danish belongs to the North Germanic group of languages and is derived from Old Norse. It is used by 15 - 20% of the population of Greenland. Danish is mutually intelligible with Swedish and Norwegian.
16. Basque
The language of the Basque Country, stretching from northeast Spain to southwest France. It is spoken by about 27% of the total population of the Basque territories.
15. Welsh
One of the offshoots of the Celtic languages, used in Wales. The Welsh language is also called Cambrian.
14. Urdu
It is better known as modern standard Urdu, which is associated with the Muslim population of Hindustan. Urdu is the national language of Pakistan. Mutually intelligible with traditional Hindi, with which he even has similar grammar.
13. Hebrew
Hebrew belongs to the group of Afro-Asiatic languages. It was first used by the ancient Jews and Israelites in the 10th century BC. e. Despite their advanced age, they still communicate in Yiddish. It is official in Israel.
12. Korean
The official language of the North and South Korea. More than 80 million people communicate on it. decipher grammatical structure and it is not easy for an amateur to understand all the rules for constructing sentences. Koreans don't usually have this problem.
The main language of adherents of Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism. It is a dialect of the ancient Indo-Aryan language. Sanskrit is one of the 22 planned languages of India.
10. Croatian
One of the official languages of the European Union. Croatian is derived from Serbo-Croatian and is based on the East Herzegovinian dialect, which is also the basis for Serbian and Bosnian.
9. Hungarian
One of the official languages of the European Union. Members of the Hungarian communities in Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, and Romania communicate on it. Belongs to the family of Uralic languages.
8. Gaelic
Also known as Scottish Gaelic. It is a Celtic language spoken by many natives of Scotland.
7. Japanese
This East Asian language is the national language of Japan. It is used by more than 125 million people worldwide. Japanese is similar to Chinese in many ways and is considered one of the most difficult languages to learn.
6. Albanian
Indo-European language spoken by the inhabitants of Kosovo, Bulgaria, Macedonia. Albanian has much in common with German and Greek, but at the same time vocabulary its much more extensive and varied.
5. Icelandic
It belongs to the Indo-European group of languages. Developed in conditions of minimal contact with other languages and dialects.
4. Thai
Better known as Siamese. Belongs to the Thai-Canadian group of languages. Nearly half of the Thai vocabulary comes from Pali, Old Khmer or Sanskrit. Thai has a complex written alphabet.
3. Vietnamese
Officially recognized in Vietnam. The Vietnamese language borrowed a lot from Chinese.
2. Arabic
Is a descendant of the ancient Arabic. Learning Arabic does not mean being able to communicate freely with native speakers. The fact is that there are a lot of dialects in the Arabic language, and they differ from each other almost as much as different languages! Because of this, it can be difficult for a person from Morocco, for example, to understand an interlocutor from Egypt, although they communicate in the same language.
1. Chinese
It is spoken by one fifth of the total population the globe, although it is considered the most difficult language to learn.
Many people ask which language is the hardest to learn. Well what can we say? Many languages are difficult. Below is a list of some of the most difficult languages to learn. But you must remember that some language may be difficult for you for certain reasons. So after reading this article, you can make your own list of the most difficult languages to learn.
What is the most difficult language in the world?
Many people ask which language is the hardest to learn. Well what can we say? Many languages are difficult. Below is a list of some of the most difficult languages to learn. But you must remember that some language may be difficult for you for certain reasons. So after reading the article, you can make your own ranking of the most difficult languages to learn.
Rating: 10 most difficult languages
Arabic, Chinese and Japanese are considered most difficult languages according to the Institute of the Diplomatic Service of the State. US department. Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian are also among the most difficult - because of the huge number of cases. Pronunciation in them is more difficult than even in Asian languages, since they have a set of long mind-blowing consonants. But our list is not limited to these languages. Here is our list of ten candidate languages, with explanations of why each language made it to the list. Your personal list may differ from this.
1. Chinese. This language made the list for many reasons. For example, the hieroglyphs used in writing are very complex and ancient. Each word is denoted by a separate character - and not a phonetic one, so it doesn't give you any the slightest idea about how the word is pronounced. The tonal system does not make life easier either, because there are four tones in Chinese. And here's another reason: there are a huge number of homophones in Chinese. For example, the word "shi" is associated with thirty different morphemes. Some people try to learn Chinese just because it is so different from other languages and so difficult.
2. Arabic. The first difficulty is in writing. Many letters have four different spellings, depending on their position in the word. Vowels are not included in the letter. Sounds are difficult, but words are even more difficult. An English-speaking student of a European language encounters a lot of words that look familiar. But the same student studying Arabic will no longer come across a single familiar word. The verb in Arabic usually comes before the predicate and object. A verb has three numbers, so nouns and verbs must be taught in singular, dual, and plural. The present tense has 13 forms. The noun has three cases and two genders. Another problem is dialects. Arabic in Morocco differs as much from Arabic in Egypt and from literary Arabic, as French differs from Spanish and Latin.
3. Tuyuka is the language of the eastern Amazon. His sound system not too complex: simple consonants and a few nasal vowels. But here is the agglutination!!! For example, the word "hóabãsiriga" means "I don't know how to write". It has two words for "we", inclusive and exclusive. The classes of nouns (gender) in the languages of the Tuyuk family range from 50 to 140. And the most surprising thing in this language is that you need to use special verb endings that make it clear how the speaker knows what he is talking about. For example, "Diga ape-wi" means "the boy was playing football (I know because I saw it)." In English we may or may not say it, but in Tuyuka these endings are obligatory. Such languages make those who speak them think carefully about how they learned what they are talking about.
4. Hungarian. First, there are 35 cases or noun forms in Hungarian. This alone already places Hungarian on the list of the most difficult languages to learn. Hungarian has a lot of expressive idioms, a lot of suffixes. A large number of vowels and how they are pronounced (deep in the throat) make this language difficult to pronounce. You will need more effort to learn and maintain this language at a decent level than for many other languages.
5. Japanese. It is difficult primarily because the letter is different from the pronunciation. That is, you cannot learn to speak this language by learning to read it - and vice versa. Moreover, there are three different writing systems. The kanji system uses Chinese characters. Students must learn from 10 to 15 thousand characters (cramming, no mnemonic tricks will help). In addition, written Japanese uses two syllabaries: katakana for loanwords and hiragana for writing suffixes and grammatical particles. The State Department allocates three times as much time to Japanese students as it does to students studying Spanish or French.
6. Navajo. This amazing language also claims a place in the list of the most difficult languages. During World War II, this language was used as a code for sending messages over the radio (radio operators were bilingual Navajo speakers). The advantage of this method was that it was possible to encrypt information very quickly. The Japanese were unable to understand this code. Navajo was chosen not only because it is very complex, but also because there were no published dictionaries or grammars for this language, but native speakers did. In this language, almost everything is done differently than in English. For example, in English in a verb, we highlight only the third person singular (in the present tense) with a suffix. And in Navajo, all faces are distinguished in the verb by prefixes.
7. Estonian. Estonian has a very rigid case system. Case is a grammatical class that affects the behavior of words in a sentence. Estonian has 12 cases, twice as many as many Slavic languages. In addition, there are many exceptions to the rules, many words can mean several different concepts.
8. Basque is also in the top ten hardest languages according to the British Foreign Office. It has 24 cases. It is not possible to link British to any Indo-European language. Possibly the oldest language in Europe. It belongs to agglutinative languages, that is, it uses suffixes, prefixes and infixes to form new words. It is more of a synthetic language than an analytical one. In other words, the language uses case endings to indicate relationships between words. It changes not only the end of the verb, but also the beginning. In addition to the usual inclinations Indo-European languages there are some other moods in Bass (for example, potential). In language a complex system designation of the subject, direct and indirect object - and they are all part of the verb.
9. Polish. The language has 7 cases, and its grammar has more exceptions than rules. For example, there are 4 cases in German and they are all logical. Learning Polish cases will take more time and effort to learn (and discover) the logic and rules, you may have to learn the whole language first. In addition, Poles rarely communicate with foreigners who speak their language, so you will have to be very careful with your pronunciation, otherwise you will not be understood.
10. Icelandic very difficult to learn due to its archaic vocabulary and complex grammar. It preserved all the ancient declensions of nouns and conjugations of verbs. Many Icelandic phonemes do not have exact equivalents in English. You can only learn them by listening to original recordings or talking to Icelanders.
But there is one more thing to keep in mind. The more a language differs from your native language (in spelling, grammar…), the more difficult it will be for you to learn it. If there is no logic in the language, it will also seem more difficult (for example, in English, the plural is formed by adding -s or -es at the end. In Arabic, the plural usually needs to be memorized, and this takes time). One thing is for sure: no matter how complex the language is, you will need the following: sufficient and appropriate resources, an understanding of what and how you learn, and a passion for learning!
Translation from mylanguages.org by Natalia Gavrilyasta.
Learning a new language is an exciting activity that promotes the development of memory and flexibility of thinking. However, you can't call it easy. And it can become even more difficult if you intend to master one of the most difficult languages in the world. Indeed, in this case, it will be necessary to take into account not only the laws of the functioning of words and sentences, but also the cultural characteristics of native speakers.
Here are the top 10 most difficult languages in the world that can make even an experienced linguist shudder. It is based on the study of specialized linguistic resources, as well as language records from the Guinness Book of Records.
Spelling and grammar are two areas that will provide the student with Polish language many complexities. Polish words loaded with consonants, making them difficult to pronounce and write. For example, szczęście means "happiness" and bezwzględny means "ruthless".
Polish grammar has seven cases in the noun declension system. Plus there is one more - vocative. As one of the linguists put it: “It is like German on steroids."
But there is also good news: The Polish language uses the Latin alphabet, so the letters will be familiar to those who are familiar with English.
It has a reputation for being a difficult language to learn, and with good reason. Nouns in it have 15 cases. Finnish is part of the Finno-Ugric language family, so it doesn't have any Latin or German influence to help you guess what a particular word means. In theory, the pronunciation of Finnish words is fairly straightforward, but they do have long vowels and consonants.
And if you are intrigued by a place with such a complex language, then we recommend visiting Helsinki, recognized as one of.
This language is so little known and unusual that during the Second World War, the US Air Force called in the Navajo cipher clerks. They used their native language to communicate by telephone and walkie-talkie. If you are interested in the history of these cryptographers, we recommend that you watch the John Woo film Windtalkers, filmed in 2002.
The Navajo language has only 4 vowels, but many consonants. Moreover, in one word there can be either only hissing consonants, or only whistling consonants. This is called "consonant harmony".
In addition to all the complexities, there are sounds in the Navajo language that have no counterpart in European languages.
The Thai language is not complicated by its grammar, but by its pronunciation, in which there are five different tones, as well as long and short vowels. The Thai alphabet has a staggering 44 consonants, 28 vowel forms and 4 diacritics for tones.
The Thai alphabet does not use letters from the Latin alphabet. It comes from the Khmer alphabet and has a peculiar rounded appearance. At the same time, unlike Cyrillic or Latin, in Thai there are no differences between lowercase and capital letters. The sentences are separated from each other by a space.
Still not impressed? Then here's another fact for you: there are several registers of speech in Thai.
- Street or colloquial - it is spoken with friends.
- Elegant or formal - it is spoken with strangers.
- Rhetorical - for public speaking.
- Religious - used to address the clergy.
- Royal - to discuss actions or address the royal family. The royal family in Thailand enjoys the deepest respect, and there is a very big difference between the royal and colloquial styles of speech.
The Eskimo language, which was included in the Guinness Book of Records, probably refers to the Eskimo branch of the Eskimo-Aleut languages.
Those who decide to learn the language of the "children of frost" (as Jack London called the Eskimos) will have to learn sixty-three forms of the present tense. But these are still flowers. And berries are 252 endings (inflections) for simple nouns.
Eskimo speakers think figuratively. And this imagery is vividly demonstrated by the word "ikiaqqivik". It translates as "travel through layers" and refers to the Internet.
Learning the language of the Chippewa (Ojibwe) Indian people living in the United States will bring real pleasure to the lover of “burning with a verb”. After all, it contains about 6 thousand verb forms.
The Chippewa language does not have a single standardization, as it exists as a chain of interconnected local varieties commonly referred to as dialects. However, a couple of words are known to every lover of stories about cowboys and Indians - these are “wigwam” and “totem”.
Due to its complexity, the Chippewa language has been included in the Guinness Book of Records.
This endangered language is spoken by the Haida people living in America and Canada.
The complexity of this language (listed in the Guinness Book of Records) is due to the fact that it has seventy prefixes. The Haida language once had over 30 different dialects. Only three of them remain today. The tone system used depends on the dialect.
The Haida language is remarkably detailed and varied. For example, there are approximately 50 various ways describe how someone falls, depending on how they landed and what caused the fall.
This is the hardest of state languages Dagestan. A significant difficulty for those who decide to study the Tabasaran language is the cases of nouns. There are, according to various estimates, from 44 to 52.
Add to this ten more parts of speech, among which there are no prepositions (their place was taken by postpositions) and three dialects and you will understand why Tabasaran is included in the Guinness Book of Records as one of the most difficult languages in the world.
There are dozens of varieties of Arabic, which are usually classified by region or country. Moreover, these varieties can be radically different from each other. So the first step is to choose the dialect you want to learn, but that's the easy part.
Arabic is a language with a non-Latin alphabet. Its 28 letters are easier to understand than thousands Chinese characters but you still have to get used to it new system writing is from right to left.
What makes reading and writing Arabic especially difficult for beginners is the elimination of most vowels in words. There are also features of spoken Arabic that make it difficult to learn. Some of the sounds used are simply unfamiliar to Russian speakers.
1. Chinese Mandarin
When asked what is the most difficult language in the world, and many linguists and the Guinness Book of Records give the answer: "Chinese". It's about about the Northern Chinese language (aka Putonghua, also known as Mandarin in Western literature), which includes closely related Chinese dialects. They are spoken by the population of most of Northern and Western China.
Mandarin Chinese is a real challenge for polyglots for a number of reasons:
- First of all, the Chinese writing system is extremely complex for people who are used to the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Chinese learners must memorize many characters that resemble complex drawings. Moreover, hieroglyphs are not words, but concepts.
- A lighter writing system (pinyin) makes it easier to write characters. But this is just another system that those who want to read and write Chinese will have to learn.
- Writing is not the only difficult part of learning Mandarin. The tonal nature of the language is also very important. Mandarin Chinese has four tones, so one word can be pronounced four different ways, and each pronunciation has a different meaning. For example, the word ma can mean “mother,” “horse,” an interrogative particle, or “swear,” depending on how you use it.
However, for many Chinese (and other foreigners as well) it is just as difficult to learn Russian as it is for a Russian person to learn Chinese.
When it comes to learning foreign language, its complexity, mainly depends on how different it is from the languages you are already fluent in. However, any of the languages mentioned in this list can be learned without much difficulty. The main thing is to make a lesson plan and find a good teacher (ideally, a native speaker). In addition, in learning a language, as in any other matter, motivation plays a huge role. Lack of interest will make any language incredibly difficult, regardless of your native language and the differences between it and what you are learning.
