What do you think is the hardest language(s)?

Question

people say it's English but English is my second language and it wasn't hard at all. Spanish (or any other Roman language) is harder because you have to conjugate the verb to the pronoun and the preterite, present, imperfect... and in English you don't have to conjugate the verb only for he/she/it and for the preterite, just add -ed.

Answer 1

I would say that it depends on what your native/mother language is. If your first language is English, Swedish might be very easy for you.
If your first language is Mandarin Chinese, then Cantonese will be fairly easy.
If your first language is Spanish, then French will be easy.
If your first language is Russian, then Ukrainian will be easier for you than for others.

Imagine all the languages of the world like a family tree: some are more closely related than others. The closer languages are to each other, the more likely that that one will be relatively easy to the other. Languages that are further away on the language tree may be relatively harder to learn.

And just as there are different personality types, there are different language types and different language learning types, too. Some people find learning a language like Chinese exceptionally difficult because a mastery of Chinese implies a solid knowledge of the Chinese Characters (Hanzi). But someone with a good visual or symbolic memory might pick up the Chinese system relatively easily, and that same person might have more trouble with a European language.

Also, most languages throughout time have gotten less complicated grammatically and syntactically. Look at some of the ancestors of the most common modern languages, and you'll find some exceptionally difficult languages! Languages such as Sanskrit, Latin, ancient Greek, proto-Indo-European, ancient Aztec and Maya, etc, had grammatical systems many times more complicated than our current, more simplified systems, even though they often had somewhat smaller vocabularies.

If i had to make a hard and fast determination on what language overall, throughout history, is the hardest, i would say one of the many ancient tongues such as those listed above.

But if you mean modern, living languages, for the average Western Speaker, I would perhaps say one of the African clicking languages, such as Khoisan, due to its very different phonetic structure, including clicking sounds and others not found in any Western languages. And if you mean one of the dominant world languages with millions of speakers, I would say perhaps, Arabic, Farsi, Hindi, Tamil, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, or Korean. Hope this helps!

Answer 2

I once asked exactly this question of a man whose native language was Tamil, but he spoke 8-9 other languages fluently. His answer was, "Whichever one is second."

Of the languages I have attempted to learn, Finnish was the hardest. It has no pronouns, prepositions, or articles. Everything is done by variations on the noun or verb. So "I went into the house" would be two words instead of five - something like "went [the 'I' conjugation] house ['into' declension]." And there are very few cognates with any English words, as it it not an Indo-European language. On the plus side, it is in the same alphabet as English and it's completely phonetic, so once you know the rules, you can pronounce a word correctly even if you have no idea what it means.

Answer 3

For me, a tone language such as Chinese or a language with clicks (especially several different clicks) would be hard, because I'm not very good at enunciating, and I'm pretty much tone deaf. But other people find different things (for example grammar) harder to master, so they'd find a language with a more complicated grammar the hardest. (Chinese from what I understand has an exceptionally simple grammar.)
I think what most people find difficult about English is the spelling, and the idioms; it's overall relatively inconsistent (especially, I think, compared to Spanish). That and "aspect" which is the counterpart to tense that describes the completion vs. ongoingness of an action. (I walk vs. I am walking vs. I have walked: all present tense but different meanings)

Answer 4

Forget Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, Russian, Latin, English, and another language you have ever heard of. They are child's play. In Archi (north Caucasus mountains) each verb has 1.5 million possible forms (each Latin verb has about 30, each Arabic verb about 40). In !Xõó (southern Africa) there are 126 different consonants, over half of which are click sounds (English has 24 consonants).

Answer 5

It is Arabic by far for the following reasons :

1 - Grammar - the Arabic grammar is very complicated, and has so many ways to sort the verbs and nouns.

2 - Pronunciation - most of the Arabic alphabets is pronounced by the throat, which you rarely find in other languages.

3 - Arabic language has 100(s) of accents spoken among the Arabs themselves, and unless you speak one of those accents fluently, you will find yourself obliged to speak the " Classical Arabic ", which is the common language among the Arabs, and the hardest at the same time.

Answer 6

Any language would be hard to learn for me!
That is why I respect anybody who comes here from a different country and learns to speak English!

If they don't get anything exactly right or it looks funny, I just think how stupid I would be if I was in their country trying to do what they are doing. Gotta love em!

Answer 7

Arabic..
you'll get the experience if you learn it...its the toughest but its the nicest and most beautiful language of the universe..

Answer 8

Chinese is much harder than Japanese for those who stated otherwise. But, pending on one's ability, I think Arabic or Chinese would rank up there.

Answer 9

I think Chinese would be hardest to learn. All those complicated little characters seem like they'd be hard to master.

Answer 10

Japanese followed by Arabic.
Anything else is a piece of cake.