What do you think is the most difficult language in the world?

Question

I believe it is English. You agree with me write? I mean, right? Threw/through, steel/steal etc. Not only are words like that mind boggling for people who are learning English, but also the way we conjugate verbs. Go, went; eat, ate; think, thought. What is a language you know that is less complicated than English? I like Arabic.

I was born here in the U.S. and English is my native language. The reason I believe it is so difficult is because I have studied several foriegn languages, and their grammar, the way they conjugate verbs, etc., are much easier than the ways we do in English.

Answer 1

American "English". Boy, do we jack it up! Do you remember all the rules of English (with almost as many exceptions to each rule) from English classes? Not to mention all of our silly slang and regional dialects.

Answer 2

English

Answer 3

hows it going,

actually, i believe Arabic is the most difficult language to learn.. Even though i come from an Arabic country, i still have lots of trouble speaking the language! it's so damn hard and tricky!
On the other hand, i picked up english by the age three.. it was really easy to learn.. i also speak french, and spanish.. but none of these compare to Arabic when it comes to the difficulty level!

Ciao, hope i answered ur question

Answer 4

English is only complicated if you learn it at a later age. My German teacher learned it at 15 and, according to him, it was a "nightmare." He eventually got fluent through writing sentences over and over again and checking his work (by the way, there is no trace of a German accent when he speaks English).

My old college professor is from Norway and he came here to the U.S. when he was a kid so he had to quickly pick up the language, however, learning English was not a problem for him.

There is a difference in WHEN you learn a language. It would be much difficult to learn Russian when you're 20 compared to learning it when you're five.

I would say the most difficult language to learn would be Chinese because it is a tonal language and there might be a word spelled one way but if you pronounce it in a different way, it can mean something else. Plus, there's THOUSANDS of characters to learn compared to the Latin alphabet of most Indo-European languages which consist of about 26 letters or so. Finnish is also very difficult to learn at an older age because of how it looks. It's not even in the Indo-European language family.

The easiest language for a native English speaker to learn would be German because the two are closely related to each other because they were formed in the same area of Europe. Next easiest to learn would be Spanish (and Spanish is a fun language to learn....took 3 classes in HS, 3 in college and loved it). Although German is not as fun to learn as Spanish is, it's a rather interesting language with an interesting history behind it.

Similiarities between English and German:

Beer = Bier
Wine = Wein (in German, the "w" is pronounced like the English "v")
Mouse = Maus
House = Haus or Hause

English and Spanish:

Beer = El Cerveza
Wine = El Vino
Mouse = El Raton (I think)
House = La Casa

Likewise, the easiest language to learn for native Spanish speakers is Italian (from what some of them have told me) because they are similar to each other.

For some reference, here are some sub-groups of the Indo-European language group:

ROMANTIC (Latin based)
*Spanish
*French
*Italian
*Portuguese
*Romanian?

GERMANIC
*German (duh)
*Dutch
*English
*Danish
*Norwegian
*Swedish

SLAVIC
*Russian
*Slovak
*Czech
*Croatian
*Serbian
*Any that I missed

CLASSICAL
*Greek
*Latin

The agonizing part of learning a language, in my opinion, is trying to learn both past and future tenses. Present tense is a cinch. You also have to identify and conjugate irregular verbs, too. The English language has thousands upon thousands of irregular verbs. Here's an easy way to identify them. If they are irregular in English, they will most likely be irregular in German and some Romance languages.

To identify a regular verb: take the verb, "to play." Put it in a sentence, like....."I played baseball today." Notice the -ED ending at the end of the word, "play." If you can safely put -ED at the end of a verb, then it's regular.

For an irregular verb, you can't put -ED at the end. Take the verb "to be" (the most important verb you should ever know when studying any foreign language). You can't say "I beed to the mall" but you can say "I have been" or "I've been to the mall."

I'm sorry this is long but this is what I have to say. Don't take this entirely as gospel; do some research for yourself.

Answer 5

Yes it may be .... untill you learn English. Once you have learned, it is the best language to express your thoughts...! I suggest you should learn English now...! A decade ago to learn English, you had to attend costly English classes or purchase course material like tapes and books. Now you can learn English for free from the comfort of your home using the Internet. The BBC and the British Council offer a number of on line courses, which teach written and spoken English. You can also improve your English by watching television programs and reading English newspapers. For more information, visit http://tinyurl.com/qnzpt

Answer 6

Hey creek, well query! Nice to look anything exclusive from the traditional "translate this" pages. I could ought to cross with Chinese, on the whole due to the fact that of the variations in sentence constitution and the writing procedure of the Chinese characters. I feel Arabic could comply with carefully. Although it does supply you an precise alphabet to paintings with, plenty of the sounds within the language are very international to westerners, and with the entire dialects that experience developed with Arabic, foreigners wishing to are living there practically ought to gain knowledge of 2 entire new (however identical) languages.

Answer 7

Well, English has borrowed a lot from other languages so that doesn't help matters lol. Considering that, English definitely is difficult to learn to a non-native speaker.

Answer 8

Definitely Arabic.

Answer 9

Chinese. Have you ever tried Dutch? It's called the Chinese of Europe. I live in Surinam (S.A) and Dutch is my native language, but it's really difficult for others. I find French quite difficult:

Answer 10

Arabic.