The most difficult languages ​​​​of the world top 20 ranking. The most difficult and easiest languages ​​\u200b\u200bto learn

Of course, it is impossible to unambiguously say which language is the most difficult. From a household point of view, the most Difficult language- the one that is least similar in grammar and phonetics to your native language. Nevertheless, linguists, on certain grounds, can indicate the complexity of a particular language. Let's take a look at the rating published on mylanguages.org

What language is the hardest to learn?

Most non-native languages ​​are difficult. But you must remember that some language may be difficult for you for certain reasons. In the comments after the article, you can add your opinion and make your rating :)

Rating of the ten most difficult languages

The most difficult languages Arabic, Chinese and Japanese are considered. At least - so writes the Institute of the State Diplomatic Service. US department. Also among the most difficult are Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian. This is due to the huge number of cases. They are also more difficult to pronounce than even in Asian languages, since the languages ​​​​of this group have a huge set of completely unpronounceable consonants.

So the list is:

1. Chinese. There were many reasons for adding this language to the nag list. Chinese is a hieroglyphic language. Each word of the language is indicated by a separate symbol - and not phonetic (sound), so you cannot understand the sound of the word by writing. The tonal system doesn't help much because there are only four tones in Chinese. There are also a huge number of homophones in Chinese. For example, the word "shi" is associated with three dozen different morphemes. There is even a poem in classical Chinese that consists of 192 Shi words spoken in different keys, and yet makes sense. You can easily find it on Google :)
2. Arab. First in terms of writing. Many letters have up to four spellings, depending on their position in the word. Vowels are not included in the letter, but may be indicated. Sounds are difficult, but words are even more difficult. The verb in Arabic usually comes before the predicate and object. A verb has three numbers, so nouns and verbs must be taught in singular, dual, and plural. The present tense has 13 forms. The noun has three cases and two genders. Another problem is dialects. Arabic in Morocco differs as much from Arabic in Egypt and from literary Arabic, as French differs from Spanish and Latin. (By the way, this is also true for Chinese, but that one is already in the first place)
3. Tuyuka is the language of the eastern Amazon. His sound system not too complex: simple consonants and a few nasal vowels. But here is the agglutination!!! For example, the word "hóabãsiriga" means "I don't know how to write". It has two words for "we", inclusive and exclusive. The classes of nouns (gender) in the languages ​​of the Tuyuk family range from 50 to 140. And the most surprising thing in this language is that you need to use special verb endings that make it clear how the speaker knows what he is talking about. For example, "Diga ape-wi" means "the boy was playing football (I know because I saw it)." In English we may or may not say it, but in Tuyuka these endings are obligatory. Such languages ​​make those who speak them think carefully about how they learned what they are talking about.
4. Hungarian. First, there are 35 cases or noun forms in Hungarian. This alone already puts Hungarian on the list of the most difficult languages ​​to learn. Hungarian has a lot of expressive idioms, a lot of suffixes. A large number of vowels and how they are pronounced (deep in the throat) make this language difficult to pronounce. You will need more effort to learn and maintain this language at a decent level than for many other languages. I must say that the Hungarian language belongs to the Finno-Ugric group of languages ​​and in Europe its relatives (albeit distant ones) are Finnish and Estonian. And Estonian is also (bingo!) in our rating :)
5. Japanese. This language is difficult primarily because the writing is different from the pronunciation. That is, you cannot learn to speak this language by learning to read it - and vice versa. Moreover, there are three various systems letters. The kanji system uses Chinese characters. Students must learn from 10 to 15 thousand characters (cramming, no mnemonic tricks will help). In addition, written Japanese uses two syllabaries: katakana for loanwords and hiragana for writing suffixes and grammatical particles. The US State Department allocates three times as much time to Japanese students as it does to students studying Spanish or French.
6. Navajo. This amazing language also claims a place in the list of the most difficult languages. During World War II, this language was used as a code for sending messages over the radio (radio operators were bilingual Navajo speakers). The advantage of this method was that it was possible to encrypt information very quickly. The Japanese were unable to understand this code. Navajo was chosen not only because it is very complex, but also because there were no published dictionaries or grammars for this language, but native speakers did. In this language, almost everything is done differently than in English. For example, in English in a verb, we highlight only the third person singular (in the present tense) with a suffix. And in Navajo, all faces are distinguished in the verb by prefixes.
7. Estonian. Estonian has a very rigid case system. The fall is grammar class, which affects the behavior of words in a sentence. Estonian has 12 cases, twice as many as many Slavic languages. In addition, there are many exceptions to the rules, many words can mean several different concepts.
8. Basque is also in the top ten hardest languages ​​according to the British Foreign Office. It has 24 cases. It is not possible to link British to any Indo-European language. Possibly the oldest language in Europe. It belongs to agglutinative languages, that is, it uses suffixes, prefixes and infixes to form new words. It's rather synthetic language, not analytical. In other words, the language uses case endings to indicate relationships between words. It changes not only the end of the verb, but also the beginning. In addition to the usual moods of the Indo-European languages, there are some other moods in Basque (eg potential). The language has a complex system of designation of the subject, direct and indirect objects - and all of them are part of the verb.
9. Polish. The language has 7 cases, and its grammar has more exceptions than rules. For example, there are 4 cases in German and they are all logical. Learning Polish cases will require more time and effort to learn (and discover) the logic and rules, you may have to learn the whole language first. However, for Ukrainians, the Polish language is not as scary as for residents. Western Europe, so this is the case when the rating can be adjusted :)
10. Icelandic very difficult to learn due to its archaic vocabulary and complex grammar. It preserved all the ancient declensions of nouns and conjugations of verbs. Many Icelandic phonemes do not have exact equivalents in English. You can only learn them by listening to original recordings or talking to Icelanders.

And summing up, we must say that even the most difficult language can be made native if you do not learn it, but immerse yourself in language environment. This is the approach we use in our studio. Come to us and let the most difficult languages ​​become your friends and helpers!

October 25, 2013

world languages

There are about 5-6 thousand different languages ​​​​on our planet, approximately 40 from this list are spoken by two-thirds of the total population. the globe. The most popular of them are: English, Chinese, Spanish, etc.

Among all this diversity, there are languages ​​that are spoken by billions of people, and there are those that are known by a small number of people. Each language has its own letters, rules for writing words and phrases, pronunciation rules, and much more. This is what distinguishes them all from each other. Some of them are very difficult. Let's take a closer look at the complexity rating of languages.

Language for encryption

So, the well-known Icelandic language opens the top ten. It is characterized by its complex grammar and pronunciation. Some sounds have no analogues in other languages, even in English, so it will be very difficult for a beginner trying to learn it. In addition, Icelandic has many very old declensions and conjugations.

The ninth position is occupied by the Polish language. Despite the fact that not many countries speak it, the language has as many as 7 cases. It should also be noted that it does not lend itself well to any grammatical rules and words - there are a lot of exceptions in it. All of them have to be memorized, otherwise there is no other way. Great importance has the same pronunciation. Only true Poles can speak without an accent, while foreigners cannot fully learn the pronunciation of words. All this makes the Polish language difficult to learn.

In eighth place is the Basque language. It has 24 cases and is very, very old. Its distinctive feature is that the connection between words lies in the designation of case endings. There are also some well-known moods here, for example, potential. In general, this indicates a difficult grammar and word formation.

On the seventh line is the Estonian language. It also has a lot of cases - 12. In addition to all this, words can have several meanings at once. There are also a large number of exceptions in the Estonian language, which makes it difficult to remember.

Sixth place rightfully belongs to the Navajo language. During the Second World War, this language was used by radio operators to encrypt messages. A very interesting fact is that there have never been any official textbooks or manuals for studying it. The grammar is also difficult. For example, if we compare it with many Slavic languages, then in it the faces differ not by the suffix, but by the prefix. There are many such examples.

Top five

The top five is opened by Japanese. It is very interesting in that children have to master writing and pronunciation separately, since the pronunciation and spelling of words are different. In addition to all this, you need to learn 10 - 15 thousand hieroglyphs, a bunch of borrowed words and all the grammar. There are practically no rules in it.

The fourth position is occupied by Hungarian. It has 35 cases, which already says a lot. There are many vowels in the alphabet, which makes it difficult to learn.

Another little-known language, Tuyuka, was in the top three. It has a lot of classes of nouns, and one word can mean a whole phrase. This is the language of the Amazon. Another feature is that it is necessary to use special verb endings here, which make it clear where the speaker learned about this fact.

Arabic and Chinese

The second place is occupied by the Arabic language.

Here many letters can be written in different ways, in four various options. There are more numbers here, another dual number is added. The present tense has 13 forms. Pronunciation is also important here. Therefore, in some countries, a conversation in the same Arabic may look different.

The first place undoubtedly goes to the Chinese language. There are no such languages ​​in terms of complexity. It contains many very ancient and complex hieroglyphs that cannot be read, but you can only remember their meanings. There are also 4 tones here. All this makes the Chinese language unique. Despite its features, there are many people in the world who are trying to comprehend it, but not everyone succeeds.

As for the Russian language, it is not among the ten most difficult, but stands a little behind. But nevertheless, due to its complex grammar, Russian is not easy.

Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that the most difficult language for many years has been Chinese. It is followed by Arabic, which is spoken by many Muslims.

The language is complex system signs, which includes sounds and words, and for each nation it is unique and unrepeatable. Any language has its own characteristics, therefore, in order to learn one of them, you need to try very hard - there are no simple and easy languages. Here are some of the most difficult languages ​​to learn that you can still master.

10. Icelandic

Icelandic is the most difficult to pronounce. It is considered the oldest, and many linguistic units are used only by the indigenous people of Iceland. No one, except for native speakers, manages to convey the truly unique sound of words: in phonetics there are such sounds, the pronunciation of which, as they say, can break the language.

9. Finnish

How about 15 cases and several hundred personal forms of the verb? But hot Finnish guys learn this at school. The only thing that makes the language easier is the exact correspondence of the spelling of the word to its phonetics, that is, how we write and pronounce. Interestingly, in Finnish there is no future tense, but there are several forms of the past.

8. Navajo

The Navajo is an Indian tribe. Second world war this language was specially taught to American soldiers, who used it to transmit ciphers. In Navajo, verb forms are formed and changed by faces through the addition of prefixes, and in addition to vowels and consonants, there are special 4 tones here: rising and falling, high and low. Navajo is gradually forgotten by young Indians: there are no dictionaries, and young people are gradually switching to English.

7. Hungarian

If 15 cases of Finnish you click like nuts, then try to master 35 Hungarian and very long and drawn-out vowels. If this seems not enough, then here you have a myriad of suffixes and the same number of set expressions that are unique to Hungarian. To somehow facilitate the study, for you there are only 2 forms of time: past and future.

6. Eskimo

Only one present tense of the verb in the Eskimo language has 63 forms, and each noun has more than 200 case forms, which are formed by changing the end of the word, prefix and suffix. Eskimo language, listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most difficult sign system, very figurative: for example, we just say "Internet", and the Eskimo will say "travel through the layers."

This is one of the state Dagestan languages, which is also noted in the Book of Records. It has 46 cases and no prepositions. Postpositions are used instead. There are 3 dialects in the Tabasaran language. In general, the language includes many borrowings from Persian, Arabic, Azerbaijani and Russian.

Basque is spoken by a few people in southern France and northern Spain. There are about half a million words and dialects in dictionaries. The Basque language was also used by cunning American intelligence officers who participated in the Second World War, passing secret data to the headquarters.

3. Russian

Yes, yes, our native language is in third place in terms of the degree of difficulty for learning. The main difficulty for foreigners in studying our “great and mighty” is stress. For example, in French, the stress always falls on the last syllable, but in ours, the stress can be absolutely anywhere in the word. Sometimes the meaning of the word itself depends on which syllable is stressed, for example, Organ and organ. The Russian language is very rich in synonyms: one lexical unit can have several dozens of brothers-synonyms. By the way, a huge variety of fonts have been developed for our language, and you can see the 25 best of them.

2. Arabic

One letter Arabic can have 4 spellings, depending on its location in the word. There are no lowercase letters in this language, and it is forbidden by the rules to break words with a hyphen. Most importantly, vowel sounds are not displayed when writing, and words are written from right to left. In almost all languages ​​of the world there are two numbers: singular and plural, but in Arabic there is also a third - dual. Here, each word has its own special pronunciation, and there are no ones that are pronounced the same. This is due to the fact that each individual sound has 4 tones, and its pronunciation is affected by the place it occupies in the word.

1. Chinese

We all know that the Chinese use more than 87 thousand hieroglyphs in writing, and how they are written is incredibly important: the meaning of the word will depend on the degree of depression and on the length of any stroke. At the same time, one "letter" of the hieroglyph can denote a single word, and even a whole sentence, and the graphic symbol does not carry a phonetic load.

The most expensive private houses and mansions in the world

8 most beautiful views sports

Learning a new language is an exciting activity that promotes the development of memory and flexibility of thinking. However, you can't call it easy. And it can become even more difficult if you intend to master one of the most difficult languages ​​in the world. Indeed, in this case, it will be necessary to take into account not only the laws of the functioning of words and sentences, but also the cultural characteristics of native speakers.

Here are the top 10 most difficult languages ​​in the world that can make even an experienced linguist shudder. It is based on the study of specialized linguistic resources, as well as language records from the Guinness Book of Records.

Spelling and grammar are two areas that will give a Polish language learner a lot of trouble. Polish words are loaded with consonants, making them difficult to pronounce and write. For example, szczęście means "happiness" and bezwzględny means "ruthless".

Polish grammar has seven cases in the noun declension system. Plus there is one more - vocative. As one of the linguists put it: “It is like German on steroids."

But there is good news: Polish uses the Latin alphabet, so the letters will be familiar to those who are familiar with English.

It has a reputation for being a difficult language to learn, and with good reason. Nouns in it have 15 cases. Finnish is part of the Finno-Ugric language family, so it doesn't have any Latin or German influence to help you guess what a particular word means. In theory, the pronunciation of Finnish words is fairly straightforward, but they do have long vowels and consonants.

And if you are intrigued by a place with such a complex language, then we recommend visiting Helsinki, recognized as one of.

This language is so little known and unusual that during the Second World War, the US Air Force called in the Navajo cipher clerks. They used their native language to communicate by telephone and walkie-talkie. If you are interested in the history of these cryptographers, we recommend that you watch the John Woo film Windtalkers, filmed in 2002.

The Navajo language has only 4 vowels, but many consonants. Moreover, in one word there can be either only hissing consonants, or only whistling consonants. This is called "consonant harmony".

In addition to all the complexities, there are sounds in the Navajo language that have no counterpart in European languages.

The Thai language is not complicated by its grammar, but by its pronunciation, in which there are five different tones, as well as long and short vowels. The Thai alphabet has a staggering 44 consonants, 28 vowel forms and 4 diacritics for tones.

The Thai alphabet does not use letters from the Latin alphabet. It comes from the Khmer alphabet and has a peculiar rounded appearance. At the same time, unlike the Cyrillic or Latin alphabet, in the Thai language there are no differences between lowercase and uppercase letters. The sentences are separated from each other by a space.

Still not impressed? Then here's another fact for you: there are several registers of speech in Thai.

• Street or colloquial - it is spoken with friends.
• Elegant or formal - it is spoken with strangers.
• Rhetorical - for public speaking.
• Religious - used to address the clergy.
• Royal - to discuss actions or address the royal family. The royal family in Thailand enjoys the deepest respect, and there is a very big difference between the royal and colloquial styles of speech.

The Eskimo language, which was included in the Guinness Book of Records, probably refers to the Eskimo branch of the Eskimo-Aleut languages.

Those who decide to learn the language of the "children of frost" (as Jack London called the Eskimos) will have to learn sixty-three forms of the present tense. But these are still flowers. And berries are 252 endings (inflections) for simple nouns.

Eskimo speakers think figuratively. And this imagery is vividly demonstrated by the word "ikiaqqivik". It translates as "travel through layers" and refers to the Internet.

Learning the language of the Chippewa (Ojibwe) Indian people living in the United States will bring real pleasure to the lover of “burning with a verb”. After all, it contains about 6 thousand verb forms.

The Chippewa language does not have a single standardization, as it exists as a chain of interconnected local varieties commonly referred to as dialects. However, a couple of words are known to every lover of stories about cowboys and Indians - these are “wigwam” and “totem”.

Due to its complexity, the Chippewa language has been included in the Guinness Book of Records.

This endangered language is spoken by the Haida people living in America and Canada.

The complexity of this language (listed in the Guinness Book of Records) is due to the fact that it has seventy prefixes. The Haida language once had over 30 different dialects. Only three of them remain today. The tone system used depends on the dialect.

The Haida language is remarkably detailed and varied. For example, there are approximately 50 various ways describe how someone falls, depending on how they landed and what caused the fall.

This is the hardest of state languages Dagestan. A significant difficulty for those who decide to study the Tabasaran language is the cases of nouns. There are, according to various estimates, from 44 to 52.

Add to this ten more parts of speech, among which there are no prepositions (their place was taken by postpositions) and three dialects and you will understand why Tabasaran is included in the Guinness Book of Records as one of the most difficult languages ​​in the world.

There are dozens of varieties of Arabic, which are usually classified by region or country. Moreover, these varieties can be radically different from each other. So the first step is to choose the dialect you want to learn, but that's the easy part.

Arabic is a language with a non-Latin alphabet. Its 28 letters are easier to understand than thousands Chinese characters but you still have to get used to it new system writing is from right to left.

What makes reading and writing Arabic especially difficult for beginners is the elimination of most vowels in words. There are also features of spoken Arabic that make it difficult to learn. Some of the sounds used are simply unfamiliar to Russian speakers.

1. Chinese Mandarin

When asked what is the most difficult language in the world, and many linguists and the Guinness Book of Records give the answer: "Chinese". We are talking about the Northern Chinese language (aka Putonghua, aka Mandarin in Western literature), which includes closely related Chinese dialects. They are spoken by the population of most of Northern and Western China.

Mandarin Chinese is a real challenge for polyglots for a number of reasons:

• First of all, the Chinese writing system is extremely complex for people who are used to the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Chinese learners have to memorize many characters that look like intricate drawings. Moreover, hieroglyphs are not words, but concepts.
• A lighter writing system (pinyin) makes it easier to write characters. But this is just another system that those who want to read and write Chinese will have to learn.
• Writing is not the only difficult part of learning Mandarin. The tonal nature of the language is also very important. Mandarin Chinese has four tones, so one word can be pronounced four different ways, and each pronunciation has a different meaning. For example, the word ma can mean “mother,” “horse,” an interrogative particle, or “swear,” depending on how you use it.

However, for many Chinese (and other foreigners as well) it is just as difficult to learn Russian as it is for a Russian person to learn Chinese.

When it comes to learning a foreign language, its difficulty mainly depends on how different it is from the languages ​​you are already fluent in. However, any of the languages ​​mentioned in this list can be learned without much difficulty. The main thing is to make a lesson plan and find a good teacher (ideally, a native speaker). In addition, in learning a language, as in any other matter, motivation plays a huge role. Lack of interest will make any language incredibly difficult, and it doesn't depend on your mother tongue and the differences between it and what you are studying.

Recently there was a blog post about who knows how many and what languages. And then it became interesting to me what languages ​​are considered difficult to learn and what this complexity depends on.

What does complexity depend on?

You can find tables presented by different sources, which will present languages ​​​​from easy to difficult in terms of time that it will take to study, for example, the American Foreign Service Institute at the State Department (FSI) created a table of five categories (how many hours it takes to study them somewhere). Danish, Dutch, Swedish are in the first category (600 hours), Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean are in the most difficult category (2200 hours). you can speak well after 1100 hours of study.)

But in reality, this table has nothing to do with us, because it is suitable only for those people whose native language is English. According to linguists, no matter what language you are a native speaker, it will be easiest to learn a related one.

The difficulty in learning can lie in anything - are words read the same way as they are written, how many times, is there any logic in changing words, what alphabet, etc.

Thus, each language has its easy and difficult sides. For example, in the Estonian language you will find 12 cases and many exceptions, but at the same time there is a complete absence of the future tense and word changes by gender.

COMPLEX LANGUAGES

Arabic, Chinese and Japanese are considered the most difficult languages ​​according to the State Foreign Service Institute. US department. Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian are also among the most difficult - due to huge amount cases. Pronunciation in them is more difficult than even in Asian languages, since they have a set of long mind-blowing consonants.

Chinese

The hieroglyphs used in writing are very complex and ancient. Each word is denoted by a separate symbol - and not phonetic, so it does not give you the slightest idea how the word is pronounced. If you want to understand and be able to express an idea simple sentences, you need to learn about 170 characters, while if you plan to work or get an education in Chinese, you have to memorize 2000-3000 characters. The tonal system also does not make life easier, because there are four tones in Chinese. The number of tones can vary from 3 to 10 (depending on dialect and counting method). Often it is not enough just to be able to distinguish tones. In many cases, the meaning of a word can only be understood from the context and the particular phrase.

Basque

In this unique, like nothing else European language very ancient concepts have been preserved. For example, the word “knife” in it literally means “a stone that cuts”, and “ceiling” means “roof of a cave”. We are talking about the language that its speakers call Euskara, and we call the Basque language. This is the so-called isolated language: it does not belong to any of the known language families. Now it is spoken and written by approximately 700 thousand people living for the most part on the coastal strip 50 kilometers wide from the Spanish city of Bilbao to the city of Bayonne in France. The Basque language is classified as an agglutinative language - this is how linguists call languages ​​in which suffixes and prefixes are used to form new words, and each of them carries only one meaning. There are about half a million words in the Basque language dictionary - approximately the same as in our great and powerful one.

Arab

The first difficulty is in writing. Many letters have four different spellings, depending on their position in the word. Vowels are not included in the letter. Sounds are difficult, but words are even more difficult. A verb has three numbers, so nouns and verbs must be taught in singular, dual, and plural. The present tense has 13 forms. The noun has three cases and two genders.

Hungarian

Hungarian has 35 cases or noun forms. This alone already places Hungarian on the list of the most difficult languages ​​to learn. Hungarian has a lot of expressive idioms, a lot of suffixes. The large number of vowels and the way they are pronounced (deep in the throat) make this language difficult to pronounce. You will need more effort to learn and maintain this language at a decent level than for many other languages.

Estonian

Estonian has a very rigid case system. Case is a grammatical class that affects the behavior of words in a sentence. Estonian has 12 cases, twice as many as many Slavic languages. In addition, there are many exceptions to the rules, many words can mean several different concepts. Although Estonian is spoken by less than two million people, most of whom live on an area half that Novosibirsk region, it presents two dialects - northern and southern. Another difficulty is the number of vowels. In total, nine vowels and thirty-six diphthongs (a combination of two vowels) are distinguished. For comparison: in English there are only eight to ten diphthongs. That is, for an English-speaking Estonian speech is the same as singing a yodel.

And so on, there are many languages ​​​​in the world and each of them is complex in its own way, that's why it's interesting to study them and become smarter :)

Which of the languages ​​you have learned or are studying has seemed the most difficult to you and why? What language would you like to know?