What is the hardest language to learn to speak and write?

Question

I have read and heard of some people who have learned how to speak as many as 3-18 or more different languages. I think that those people are genuises, and I think that only people of that type who have learned how to speak, read, and write many different languages are the ones who can answer my question, but I welcome answers and opinions from everyone who is willing to respond to my question.

Answer 1

Languages are grouped into families, and learning one from the same family is easier than learning one from a totally different family. An English speaker would have an easier time learning French or German since they are in the same family and have many similarities, but would have a more difficult time learning a language like Japanese which is in a totally unrelated family.

Answer 2

All the languages of the oriental/east asian regions area are extremely difficult to learn to speak or write. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.
Most other asian languages are no piece of cake either. I'm currently trying to learn one, and boy am I stuck.
Russian and German are supposed to be confusing, but I don't know if they are really difficult.
Learning French was a failure, though that was probably just me.
In some countries like India and places like Africa, learning multiple languages is a must, because they vary from state to state, or more often, province to province even.

Answer 3

Japanese
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language

Answer 4

In my opinion English would be the hardest language to learn as a second language because there are so many irregular verbs and things like that.

Answer 5

English is the hardest language to learn. If you study any other language, you'll see it. A lot of people think that Asian languages like Chinese or Japanese are the hardest. Learning the alphabets is hard, but most Asian languages are easy.

Answer 6

HEHEHE. In india there are lotta languages. Minimum one language for an state. Even i know Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu,Konkini, saurashtra, English and so on. I can read and write in all these languages. Now do u call me as genius.
My dad often scolds me as fool. Iam an tamilian. We have 247 letters totally.This will be same for other South Indian languages. We dont think all these are tought than Chinese.

NOTE: I HEARED THAT CHINESE LETTERS ARE 5000+.

Answer 7

It may be hard to answer since as it was answered before that it is actually a 'total opinion'. But based on what i have heard from my friends, Japanese (Nihonggo/Niponggo) for them is the most difficult. i don't know what really made it difficult but i guess it is because the uses of letters, syllables, etc. vary. Well, those are actually for them but if you're really interested in learning a language (most of all if you really love it), i guess there won't be any problem. It certainly won't be difficult for you.

Answer 8

the hardest language to speak depends on first, what language you already know, and second, what the pronounced sounds of the language are,and how different they may be from your own language.
FOR INSTANCE: the language of Hungary Estonia and Finland are asian languages. They are totally unlike any european languages. For a person whose native language is english, theya re very difficult to learn to speak. But for a Hungarian to learn Finnish, it is not as difficult. So you start off with what your language is, to decide what language is themost difficult for the person to learn to speak read and write.
THE OTHER SITUATION IS PRONOUNCIATION:
Speaking a language may be from a pronounciation of the sounds, very easy depending on how different the sounds are from the sounds of the person's native language. For instance, it is very difficult for a person whose native language is english to speak the sounds of arabic correctly, although the person would not have a difficult problem in learning to read and write arabic.
But speaking it to be understood would be very hard, as sounds exist in arabic that do not exist in english. However, as hard as japanese is to learn to read and write, the sounds of Japanese, except for the letter R, are the same as in english. Its pronounciation is easy. And for persons speaking other european languages other than English, all sounds of Japanese are within the sounds of other languages (English does not trill the letter R like other european langauges do). But reading and writing japanese is difficult.

Answer 9

I speak a little Spanish, but my Spanish teacher says American is the most difficult. We adopt words from other languages faster than any other culture and we change the meanings of our words like no ther culture does. We also invent more new words.

Answer 10

Cantonese. It's tonal, more tones than Mandarin (8 vs 4). 14000 or so symbols to write. Yep, it's got to be about the hardest.