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2007-11-24 02:10:41 · 29 answers · asked by starfin.madurai2007 2 in Society & Culture Languages

29 answers

The world's hardest language to learn is Sentinelese. No one off the island of Sentinel speaks Sentinelese and no one on the island speaks any other language.

Sentinelese is spoken on a single island in the Indian Ocean, called North Sentinel. There are about 200 people who live on the island, but no one knows for sure. The island actually grew in size because of geological uplifting after the 2004 tsunami. No one has ever recorded more than a few words of Sentinelese because outsiders who try to go to the island are fought off. The Indian government tried to land a helicopter on the island after the tsunami, but the helicopter was fought off by a man shooting arrows at it from the beach. The only photos of the people are people standing on the beach shooting arrows and making threatening guestures at the boats with cameramen on them. The Indian government leaves them alone and they leave the Indian government alone.

Because of this it is IMPOSSIBLE to learn Sentinelese. That makes it the hardest language to learn.

But if you want to know about Linguistically difficult languages you have to look outside the common ones, which are child's play to learn by comparison. Archi, a language of the Caucasus, has 1.6 million different forms for every single verb (there are about 30 different forms for each Russian verb). Pawnee, a language of the American plains, builds verbs that are up to 30 syllables long with as many as 20 different prefixes. The !Xoo language of South Africa has 125 different consonants, more than half of which are click sounds that are found in only a small number of languages of southern Africa. Many of the Australian languages divide their nouns up into a dozen different noun classes and each noun class uses a different set of common verbs, so that "to go" used with one noun class is a completely different verb than "to go" used with another noun class.

2007-11-24 02:16:12 · answer #1 · answered by Taivo 7 · 7 3

Polish is the hardest language to learn in the world
Polish has seven cases and Polish grammar has more exception than rules. German for example has four cases all which are logical, Polish cases seem to have no pattern or rules; you have to learn the entire language. Asia languages usually do not have cases, or at least like that. The Pronunciation is eons harder than Asia language as it usually has long tong twisting consonants. For example a Polish sentence might look like this. Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie i Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie. Wyindywidualizowaliśmy się z rozentuzjazmowanego tłumu.
Further Polish people rarely hear foreign speak their language and with no accent or regional variation than pronunciation must be exact or they will have no idea what you are talking about.
So the next time you have herd someone has learned Polish have some respect. Polish is the hardest language to learn. But the truth is I doubt you will hear a native English Speaker, speak Polish beyond a few phrases. Can it be learned? Yes you can Learn Polish. People do, it just takes humility.

2007-11-24 02:19:26 · answer #2 · answered by Hook'em Horns 1 · 0 2

Well, I am a native English speaker and am currently learning Mandarin Chinese. My personal view is that it's easy to pick up "a little English". You can pretty much slaughter the tenses, pronunciation, and inflection, and many people will still be able to understand your meaning. Mastering English, however, is quite difficult. As far as being the world's hardest, I am not sure how you can objectively determine something like that. But there are tougher ones out there in almost every category, so I would say that while it is more difficult than many, it is not the hardest.

2016-04-05 06:18:33 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

I´m sorry, what is a hard language for someone, can be quite easy for another. It has a lot to do which language is your native language and of course if you have a skill of learning new languages. Just as some of us have more talents for mathematics, for example, or some have an emphatic mind!

Why not try to study one foreign language and if you don´t feel it´s alright, start to study another! Good luck!

2007-11-24 02:37:36 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 3 0

I would rate 3 as extremely difficult for English
speakers to master:
Basque
Inuit
and
Navaho,
a native American language.

2007-11-24 02:26:57 · answer #5 · answered by steiner1745 7 · 1 0

My husband is in Iraq and says Arabic is the hardest. I can't even learn Spanish, but when we were in Korea, I learned enough to get around, so I wouldn't say Korean is the hardest.. at least not to talk LOL Writing is a different story!!!

2007-11-24 02:15:05 · answer #6 · answered by justjenn_8 2 · 0 1

Either Korean or Arabic. I don't say Chinese because right now I'm learning it and once you get an understanding of why the characters were created like they were its not too bad.

2007-11-24 13:22:02 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1 0

it depends from the mother language,,, I am italian and 4 me english is not very difficult but I image that 4 people who speak english, italian could be very difficult becouse there are many irregulars verbs, many many words...Italian 4ex it's born from Latin.. and so 4 me french,spanish portuguese are not very difficult to learn...ah...the most difficult language 4 me it's chinese&japanese...!sorry 4 the mistakes bye :)

2007-11-24 03:43:36 · answer #8 · answered by Special Nemesis ♠ 5 · 2 0

I believe it about the people on that island but as far as English goes, look at this:

Moose/ Moose
Mouse/Mice
Deer/Deer

And there are so many others.
English has so many exceptions to the rules that it makes it difficult to learn.

2007-11-24 05:11:38 · answer #9 · answered by Katie 2 · 0 2

Russian.

2007-11-24 02:20:28 · answer #10 · answered by Beau R 7 · 2 1

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