What's the most dificult language to learn?

Answer 1

Depends on where you're from, really. In my sociology class, we were discussing how different cultures adapt to new societies (because of immigration), and for the Chinese, English was the hardest language to learn; for English speaking people, Chinese and Japanese are the hardest. I'm sure it has a lot to do with an individual's own cognition, but that's how it is seen as a cultural whole.

Answer 2

Perhaps two of the most difficult languages to learn in all aspects (speaking, reading, and writing) would have to be Mandarin Chinese and Japanese, because both require the learner to recognize a very wide set of characters. Learning to speak the language might not be as difficult, but learning to read it is another thing entirely. Even the Chinese and the Japanese themselves find it an accomplishment if even a native Chinese or Japanese speaker can read certain classic literary works. I am not sure which it is for the Chinese, but for the Japanese, to be able to read Murasaki Shikibu's "Tale of Genji" in the original is a great accomplishment.

As for spoken languages, certain African languages may be difficult to learn for any other person apart from one who as grown up listening and speaking the language since they were children. Many native English speakers also find difficulty in speaking tonal languages - meaning, languages whose nuances in grammar are based on changes in the tone and emphasis placed on certain syllables, rather than on the use of verbs and adverbs and the like.

Answer 3

English

Answer 4

For English speakers, the hardest "world languages" to master are Chinese, Japanese Korean (5 on a scale of 1 to 5 at the DLI and the FSI language schools). Others cite Chinese characters as the hard part, but in fact that's not really true. In Korean words can be written either with characters (if they exist for the syllable in question) or in hangul (used to the exclusion of Chinese characters in North Korea). But once you know, or can guess from context or a contiguous character, the meaning of one character you can guess at the word. Reading is actually easier with Chinese characters than with Roman alphabet. And there is (I am told) no such thing as dyslexia in Chinese, Japanese Korean -- even if someone who is bilingual is dyslexic in English!

But Navajo (and similar indigenous languages) and some of those languages involving clicks that are imperfectly, if at all, recorded in writing are far more difficult. Only children of missionaries who have grown up among the speakers are said to master them.

See the film "The Code Talkers"

Two reasons come to mind: it is hard to distinguish among similar sounds unless you've grown up hearing them spoken. And the syntax and phraseology are so different from what we're used to that you have to take the thought apart and articulate it all over again. I studied Korean for 5 years and never got good at it, although I could read the newspaper (spoken and written Korean are quite different).

Answer 5

I was a linguistics major in college and I remember learning that, for native speakers of English, Finnish (the language of Finland) was the most difficult to learn. It contains many sounds not used in English (which are troublesome for many English speakers to pronounce) and it's grammar and lexicon are very different from English.

Answer 6

English and Mandarin Chinese apparently are among the most difficult languages on earth to learn. Anyone beg to differ?

Answer 7

I have a special desire in to learn foreign languages, it´s true!
But I think is very difficult to learn japanese language... And I need to learn it very fast, because I want to know the Japan in the next year. Let´s go?

Answer 8

I'm still working on English after all this time, so it gets my vote. One study found that it was the most difficult European language to learn to read.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1233

JMB

Answer 9

For me Chinese because they have 'tones'. After a number of years there, during a technical discussion it still sounds to me they're talkinf about chickens.

For my wife Czech - all nouns are male, female or neuter with different endings, she also has trouble pronouncing some letters.

Answer 10

Ever try learning Irish? I spent 13 years learning it in school and I can barely string two sentences together.