What is the hardest language to speak, then read or write?

Answer 1

Icelandic; there was a Discovery Channel show on Savants, and there was this guy who was told to learn that language in a week I believe. Then, he was interviewed in Icelandic, and he had to respond in that language. He spoke perfect Icelandic. The reason people chose for him to learn that language is that it is proven to be the toughest language to learn.

Answer 2

I think it depends on which language is your mother tongue. For us, Asian languages with different characters would be a challenge and ancient Greek would be pretty hard too! French may not seem like the hardest, but apparently it is a difficult one to become fluent in. Italian is probably the easiest romantic language because there is a strong correlation between the written and spoken elements. My mum speaks Irish and I know a bit and often there is virtually no connection between how a word is spelled and how it's pronounced. English is difficult in ways because there are many exceptions to the basic rules.

Answer 3

I read a story about some priest who learned something like a dozen languages. When asked this question he said that Chinese gave him the most trouble. Probably because it is so alien when it comes to writing it and because it's tonal properties are so much different than westerners are used too.
Ironically, most Asians say English is the hardest because of all the slang.

Answer 4

I agree with j4rose.

It depends entirely on which language is your native language. For English speakers, I would guess Chinese would be one of the hardest.

For native Germans, English is usually extremely easy (or so I've been told by nearly all of my german friends). Yet, they have a hard time with French and say it is extremely difficult.

For most Latinos, on the other hand, English is difficult, even if they live in the United States.

Some languages are simply more closely related to each other than others, and I think that the speaker's native language must be taken into account before determining which language would be most difficult for them to learn.

Answer 5

English

Answer 6

According to my linguistics professors, English is the hardest language to learn of any of the major languages.

The reason is that spelling is inconsistent, as are the rules of grammar. All stemming from how English became English (long story...) ph = f? c=k and s...

As for reading and writing, English is still probably the hardest because of the grammatical and spelling issues.

Learning any of the character languages (Chinese, Japanese, etc) would probably also be difficult due to the characters (something like 10,000 in chinese!)

-dh

Answer 7

My answer is entirely biased but I would say Japanese in terms of writing and reading. The characters they borrowed from chinese usually have at least two readings and then when you consider that names often have especially idiosyncratic readings I think it makes this a tough language to read and write. I mean sometimes you can figure out the meaning by context and by the fact that a character might have a certain radical but you might not know how it is said. Sometimes you might be able to guess how it is said but not know what it means.

Answer 8

My 8th grade Spanish teacher told me English was the hardest language for people to learn because we have words such as to, too, and two, that sound the same but are spelled different and have different meanings as well, so it's very confusing for others.

Answer 9

English, because it's actually a combination of over two dozen languages that travelled thru the Brittish Isles for a few centuries and warped into a common tongue. Too many spelling and grammar rules that oppose each other. Too many words that sound the same but mean different things. Aaaaaargh!!!!!!!

Answer 10

Actually, English is one of the most difficult languages to learn properly- reading and writing, because of the many, many exceptions and rules.