What language is most difficult for a westerner to learn: Arabic, Japanese or Chinese?

Answer 1

I have not been exposed to any amount of Arabic in my lifetime, so I will not comment on that. I will place my focus mainly on Chinese and Japanese and will let others comment on Arabic.

Chinese is a very vague, since there are thousands of different dialects, the main two being Mandarin and Cantonese. As a native speaker of Cantonese, I can tell you that the mouth movements required to be proficient in such a dialect are harder for Westerners to mimic, and the dialect may be "too" monotone for many. Westerners also have trouble with swallowing the sounds such as "un" and have a tendency to go "aaan". As you may have heard from other sources, Cantonese is a tonal language, meaning that different tones dictate what the word means. For example, the word "ma" can mean mother, grandmother, or horse depending on the tone you use.

Mandarin, however, is easier for Westerners to learn than Cantonese is. Simply put, the sounds in the dialect (while rather "sh" heavy) have little noticable difference from those of western languages. Like Cantonese, however, Mandarin is tonal. It is more systematic however: each sound in Mandarin has precisely four different tones that connotate different words.

Next, we have to deal with Chinese calligraphy. Each word has its designated Chinese character, and there is no alphabet. In order to be considered fluent, a person must know at least 1,000 different Chinese characters (really intensive memorization). A westerner also has to deal with the differences between written Chinese and spoken dialects, however, which is something that does not plague many other languages of the world. Even though all dialects share the same Chinese characters, spoken Mandarin is the standard for written chinese. Thus, different dialects such as Cantonese must be written as if one was speaking in Mandarin. In other words, there are two forms of Cantonese: written and colloquial. Westerners who hope to learn Cantonese will have to bear the burden of essentially learning two different languages.

Lastly, we have Japanese, a language that borrowed many of its elements from Chinese. Unlike Chinese, the "basic structure" Japanese is furigana, an alphabet system. Furigana has two brances: Hiragana and Katakana. Hiragana is the main alphabet of Japanese and is the basis for all sounds in the language, which, by the way, are very easy for Westerners to pronounce. Katakana consists of the same sounds that are present in Hiragana, but are used strictly to spell out the sounds of foreign words using Japanese syllables.

The harder part of Japanese, however, is the inclusion of Kanji, which happened a few centuries ago. Kanji is basically Chinese characters incorporated in written Japanese. Kanji are pronounced using the sylllables iof Furigana. Unlike in the Chinese language, however, the characters in Japanese can have different meanings and downright different pronunciations depending on the context being used. Usually, if a Kanji is written in a sentence next to furigana only, the Kun-yomi (Japanese original) pronunciation is used. If more than one Kanji are placed side by side, most likely the Kanji were combined to form a new word and are each pronounced using the on-yomi (Japanese approximation of the Chinese pronunciation of the character) pronunciation.

Where there you have it, a summary of my knowledge of Japanese and Chinese. To conclude, I give a listing: one being the hardest and the third being the easiest for a Westerner to learn.

1. Cantonese
2. Mandarin
3. Japanese

I hope this helps.

Answer 2

For speaking, Chinese is probably most difficult. It's all phonetics, and sounds not found in the english language. Maybe Arabic's like that too... not sure. For writing, Chinese is pretty tough too.... all characters, and you just kind of have to know them. At least, there is something like an alphabet even in Japanese.

Answer 3

I do not know how hard Arabic is, so, I can't give any comment about Arabic. However, I agree with Aoi, Cantonese is hard bit cantonese is just not so common as when compare with Mandarin. To be able to read / write / speak (Mandarin Chinese is real hard too.

Answer 4

For a western surely English is most difficult to learn!!!

Answer 5

They are all really hard to learn but I guess I would say Japanese of Chinese (Which ever one that has the symbols and not letters).

Answer 6

erm arabic! coz the grammar is so complicated. the vocabulary is quite easy and some words are similar to hindi and malay language. japanese is also difficult but i think chinese is quite ok.

Answer 7

Kahit pa saang bansa ka galing, Chinese ang pinakamahirap na pag-aralang lingguwahe. Ito ay ayon sa mga pag-aaral.

I mean,
No matter what country are you from, it is Chinese that is the most difficulat language to learn. That is according to studies and statistics.

Answer 8

About me ,not because i'm Arab but for real Arabic is simple language with good studying ,because you will find it logical and you will find interesting with the studying

Answer 9

Chinese definitely.

Answer 10

I take chinese, and let me tell you it is hard. For exsample, say that a word is "ma", if you say it with your voice tone going down, it means something else if it goes up.

Japanese does not have this, and they have alot of eglish words in there vocabulary.