Many people ask which language is the hardest to learn. Well what can we say? Many languages ​​are difficult. Below is a list of some of the most difficult languages ​​to learn. But you must remember that some language may be difficult for you for certain reasons. So after reading this article, you can make your own list of the most difficult languages ​​to learn.

What is the most difficult language in the world?

Many people ask which language is the hardest to learn. Well what can we say? Many languages ​​are difficult. Below is a list of some of the most difficult languages ​​to learn. But you must remember that some language may be difficult for you for certain reasons. So after reading the article, you can make your own ranking of the most difficult languages ​​to learn.

Rating: 10 most difficult languages

Arabic, Chinese and Japanese are considered most difficult languages according to the Institute of the Diplomatic Service of the State. US department. Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian are also among the most difficult - because of the huge number of cases. Pronunciation in them is more difficult than even in Asian languages, since they have a set of long mind-blowing consonants. But our list is not limited to these languages. Here is our list of ten candidate languages, with explanations of why each language made it to the list. Your personal list may differ from this.

1. Chinese. This language made the list for many reasons. For example, the hieroglyphs used in writing are very complex and ancient. Each word is represented by a separate character - and not a phonetic one, so it doesn't give you the slightest clue how the word is pronounced. The tonal system does not make life easier either, because there are four tones in Chinese. And here's another reason: there are a huge number of homophones in Chinese. For example, the word "shi" is associated with thirty different morphemes. Some people try to learn Chinese just because it is so different from other languages ​​and so difficult.

2. Arabic. 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. An English-speaking student of a European language encounters a lot of words that look familiar. But the same student studying Arabic will no longer come across a single familiar word. 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. In Morocco, Arabic differs as much from Arabic in Egypt and from literary Arabic, as French differs from Spanish and Latin.

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 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.

5. Japanese. It is difficult primarily because the letter 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 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 to be on the list of the most complex 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 case 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). In language a complex system designation of the subject, direct and indirect object - and they are all 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 take more time and effort to learn (and discover) the logic and rules, you may have to learn the whole language first. In addition, Poles rarely communicate with foreigners who speak their language, so you will have to be very careful with your pronunciation, otherwise you will not be understood.

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.

But there is one more thing to keep in mind. The more a language differs from your native language (in spelling, grammar…), the more difficult it will be for you to learn it. If there is no logic in the language, it will also seem more difficult (for example, in English, the plural is formed by adding -s or -es at the end. In Arabic, the plural usually needs to be memorized, and this takes time). One thing is for sure: no matter how complex the language is, you will need the following: sufficient and appropriate resources, an understanding of what and how you learn, and a passion for learning!

Translation from mylanguages.org by Natalia Gavrilyasta.

I, like any teacher, are often asked: “What is the most difficult language in the world?”, “And which is more difficult: French or Spanish?”, “Which language is the easiest to learn?” or “Why is English so difficult?” All of these questions indicate that people have an intuitive sense that languages ​​vary in complexity, but fail to build a consistent "scale".

Generally speaking, such scales exist. For example, the American Foreign Service Institute at the State Department (FSI) divides all languages ​​​​into 5 categories, depending on how many hours it takes to study them somewhere up to level C1 (Upper-Intermediate / Advanced). In the first, easiest category (600 hours) are Danish, Dutch, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian and Swedish. In the most difficult, fifth (2200 hours), - Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The Russian fell into the fourth category; according to the State Department, it can be spoken well after 1100 hours of training. The entire table can be viewed in full.

From this, for example, it should follow that the Russian language is 1.83 times more difficult than Romanian, but twice as easy as Arabic. Is it really? Unfortunately no. First, these data are only for native English speakers. Therefore, Danish, which is related to English, is in the first group. Secondly, FSI is very conservative educational institution, where they teach languages ​​according to university - that is, slow and aimed at a deep study of language culture - programs. If you need a language for everyday communication on simple topics, this classification is not for you.

I will say right away: there is no universal “gradation of languages” according to the complexity of learning. All living languages ​​are used by their speakers and mastered by foreigners (even if we are talking about two neighboring tribes in the Amazonian forests, there are always some kind of interpreters). All languages ​​can be described by linguists. All languages ​​perfectly cater to the needs of native speakers. Therefore, comparing languages entirely- a thankless task. But in some particular aspects, languages ​​can really differ significantly in complexity. This is what I want to write below.

THE Difficulty of a NEW LANGUAGE IS DETERMINED BY THE LANGUAGES YOU ALREADY KNOW

Each of us has native language. If this language is Russian, then we can easily cope with the study of another Slavic language. This ease is, of course, relative. Due to the similarity with Russian, you are likely to occasionally replace foreign words and forms with native ones. Also, closely related languages ​​always look and sound a bit "funny". A Russian will find many funny words in Bulgarian, a Czech in Polish, a German in Dutch, an Azerbaijani in Turkish.

If you already know a foreign language, then other languages ​​​​of the same group will seem easier to you. For example, Dutch is the easiest language to learn if you can speak both English and German. Another thing is that this task, due to its ease, may seem uninteresting (for example, I read Dutch, but I don’t want to learn it: it’s boring).

DIFFICULTITY OF LANGUAGE DEPENDS ON CULTURE

Almost any language reflects the cultural ties of the people who speak it. This is especially true of writing and "high", "abstract" vocabulary. For example, the Russian language, like many other Orthodox nations, uses the Cyrillic alphabet. The closely related Church Slavonic and Latin served as a source of book and scientific vocabulary for the Russian language. Thanks to the latter fact, we can easily find "similar" words in almost all European languages. The Russian "revolution" is easily recognized in Polish "rewolucja", Romanian "revoluție", English "revolution" or Spanish "revolución". But there are also European languages who prefer to create "native" equivalents of such concepts. The same "revolution" in Irish will be "réabhlóid", and in Hungarian "forradalom".

Things are even "worse" for us in languages ​​belonging to completely different linguistic "civilizations". For example, in all languages ​​associated with Islamic culture (Turkic, Iranian, etc.), “high” vocabulary is borrowed from classical Arabic. Arabic is "easier" for native speakers of these languages ​​than for us. AT South-East Asia a similar function was performed by classical Chinese. We will not find any Latinisms that make life easier, and even more so Church Slavonicisms.

COMMON LANGUAGES EASIER

When answering the question “what is the easiest language?”, it is worth paying attention to the fact that the languages ​​spoken by big number people and which are actively studied (or even completely borrowed) by other peoples, often turn out to be simpler in some respects than those that are limited to one small territory. This is especially true for grammar. There are two reasons for this: firstly, foreigners or new speakers of such languages ​​intuitively “simplify” them for ease of use. This is exactly what happened with Latin. For example, having forgotten their Celtic language, the ancestors of the French, the Gauls, switched not to classical, but to a significantly simplified (folk) Latin. In the end, the case ended with the disappearance of noun declension in modern French. Secondly, the lighter the language, the more likely it is to spread faster.

THERE IS SOMETHING EASY IN ANY LANGUAGEAND PLEASANT

Comparing languages ​​in general is, as I already wrote, a thankless task. But in certain aspects, one language can easily be easier than another. Moreover: in every language there is some easy-to-learn pleasantness (at least from the point of view of a Russian speaker).

For example, in Italian or Spanish, pronunciation is very easy from the point of view of Russian. In Chinese - surprise, surprise! - very easy grammar (that is, almost none of it). In modern literary Arabic, the grammar is also not too complicated. The Turkic and Finno-Ugric languages ​​have a very transparent word structure (the endings do not “merge” with each other, but are clearly separated from each other and unambiguous in meaning). German has a simple and consistent spelling, and the pronunciation is quite simple. From the point of view of a foreign native speaker of a Western European language, Russian has a fairly simple system of tenses.

In short, there is no language in which you would not be in for a pleasant surprise!

ANY LANGUAGE IS SOMETHING DIFFICULTY

You can’t say about any particular language that it is the most difficult language in the world. Each of them has its own characteristics. But, alas, in any natural language there are some unpleasant features for a foreigner (or even a native speaker!)

In the case of Chinese, these problem areas are obvious: tones and characters. Moreover, the latter cause difficulties for native speakers, significantly delaying school literacy education. That is why it is considered one of the most difficult languages ​​in the world. Arabic is also complex in terms of phonetics and writing (although much easier than Chinese). There are a huge number of tenses in Italian, Spanish and French, irregular verbs and not quite natural for Russian rules for the use of verbal moods. In Russian, there are really few tenses, but there is a verb form (did / did), from the rules of use of which foreigners can easily go crazy.

English is relatively simple in everything... Almost. The fact is that due to the huge number of regional variants and dialects, it is not easy to learn to understand natural English speech by ear. Although many people find that it is the easiest language to learn.

SIMPLE DOES NOT MEAN EASY

It turns out that in any language there are things "easier" and "harder". Therefore, in my opinion, in general, all languages ​​are quite well “balanced” and do not differ too much from each other in this. If suddenly you are faced with the need to learn some “difficult” language in your opinion (Japanese or Arabic, for example), do not despair: for every difficulty you encounter, some pleasant and easy phenomenon will always be found in them.

But here I would like to make one reservation: systemic "simplicity" does not always mean "ease" of assimilation. Let's take as an example those who set everyone on edge English Times. Formally, they are extremely simple: there are four auxiliary verbs (be, have, do, will) four forms of the verb (infinitive, present participle in –ing, past participle on –ed and simple past tense –ed) and one sad ending -s. All times are built from combinations of these elementary "bricks" (and not even all of them). But it is precisely because of the small number of "bricks" and the variety of their combinations that the confusion so familiar to many occurs.

Andrey Logutov

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 - whether words are 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 the huge number of 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, unlike anything 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?

Instruction

In terms of proximity, the most difficult language in the world is the Basque language, which does not belong to any language group. The Basque language has 24 cases and is considered the oldest in Europe. This language uses suffixes, infixes, and prefixes to form new words. Here, case endings are used to denote connections between words. The Basque language has a very complex system of marking the subject, indirect and direct objects. Now Basque is spoken and written by approximately 700,000 people.

Scientists from the American Institute foreign languages created a kind of most difficult language to learn (for native English speakers). The most difficult for them were: Bengali, Burmese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Czech, Khmer, Lao, Nepalese, Polish, Thai, Tamil, Vietnamese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese languages.

In terms of writing, Chinese, Korean and Japanese are considered the most difficult languages. For example, the latest Chinese, compiled in 1994, contains 85,568 characters. In Japan, children go to school for 12 years. To successfully pass the exam, a Japanese student must learn 1850 characters.

The Russian language is considered one of the most difficult in the world, but it will be quite accessible for a Serb, Pole or Ukrainian to learn, but for a Turk or Japanese, Russian will seem very difficult.

The number of languages ​​spoken by the peoples of Dagestan cannot be accurately calculated. The Tabasaran language entered the Guinness Book of Records as containing the most a large number of cases - from 44 to 52. There are 54 and 10 parts of speech in the Tabasaran language.

The Eskimo language also held the record. There are 63 forms of the present tense. Eskimo speakers are very imaginative. For example, the word “internet” is expressed in it by the unpronounceable term “ikiaqqivik”, which literally means “travel through layers”.

Israeli scientists conducted a curious experiment among native speakers of Hebrew, Arabic and English. The results were very interesting. Hebrew and English speakers were able to read words easily using only one hemisphere of the brain independently of the other. Carriers, while reading, actively used both hemispheres of the brain at the same time. The conclusion of scientists: when reading Arabic writing, the work of the cognitive systems of the brain is activated. So, if you want to develop your mind, then studying Arabic.

Related videos

note

Oddly enough, but Chinese grammar is one of the easiest in the world.

Sources:

• Which language is the most difficult - the eternal battles of linguists
• 10 most difficult languages

Tip 2: Which language is the hardest and which is the easiest to learn?

Learning foreign languages ​​opens up new career prospects, makes it possible to watch films and read books in the original, understand the meaning of songs, and simply trains memory. However, not all languages ​​are learned with the same ease - among them there are very simple ones, and those that are extremely difficult to learn.

One of the most difficult languages ​​is Chinese. Each word is indicated in it by a separate symbol, having learned which, you still will not have a clue about how it is pronounced. The complexity is also represented by a huge number of homophones - words that are pronounced the same way, but are spelled differently and denote different concepts. The tonal system in Chinese also does not make the task easier for the student. In addition to the general intonation of the sentence, each syllable is also pronounced with a different tone, which determines the meaning of the word.

The Japanese language is not much inferior to Chinese in its complexity. Knowledge of symbols also does not give an idea of ​​their pronunciation. Japanese has three writing systems: kanji, which uses Chinese characters, hiragana, which is used to write grammatical particles and suffixes, and katakana, which is used to represent loanwords.

It is estimated that students who study Japanese spend three times as much time on it as those who study English or French.

The Arabic language also causes a lot of difficulties. Vowels are not used when writing, and consonants have four spellings depending on their position in the word. Nouns and verbs have to be studied in singular, dual and plural. The nouns themselves have three cases and two genders, and the verb in the sentence is placed before the predicate.

Of great difficulty are the dialects of Arabic, which can differ as much as modern European languages ​​differ from each other.

The easiest languages

Despite the fact that in English language there are a lot of nuances (for example, words are often read not at all the way they are written, and a lot of verbs are conjugated incorrectly), he has a simple grammar. Besides, in Everyday life people often come across English in songs, movies, brand names and products on supermarket shelves. Learning this language will not be so difficult.

Spanish is also quite easy to learn. The pronunciation is very similar to English, however, unlike the language of the UK and the US, in Spanish the spelling of words is the same as their pronunciation. The structure of sentences in this language is also easy to learn.

For a Russian-speaking person, it will not be very difficult to study other languages ​​\u200b\u200bof the Slavic group, and the closer they are to their native language, the easier it will be to learn. The fastest way to learn Ukrainian and Belarusian, somewhat more difficult - Bulgarian and Czech. The Polish language is not considered simple - it has seven cases, and the grammar is replete with exceptions to the rules.

In the world, according to various estimates, there are from 2000 to 6000 languages.

How to understand which of them is the most difficult? By what criteria is this determined?

Firstly, it is believed that it is very important which language is native for a person. And it will be easier for him to learn close languages. For example, it will be easier for a Pole to master Russian than, for example, Turkish.

Also look at the complexity of the grammar of the language. This is a very important indicator for determining what is the most difficult language.

The most difficult of the most common, according to linguists, are Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. Interestingly, the perception of Chinese and Arabic by the human brain differs from the perception of other languages. For speakers of these languages, both hemispheres of the brain are involved in writing and reading, while for speakers of other languages, in this case, only one hemisphere works. Here we can conclude that the study of these languages ​​will help to greatly develop the brain.

What languages ​​are considered the most difficult to learn?

In Arabic, for example, in addition to writing from right to left, there is a difficult pronunciation, there is no logic in writing plural, many letters have four different meanings.

The Chinese language is difficult, first of all, because you need to memorize a huge number of hieroglyphs. To more or less read, you need to know at least 3,000. And there are more than 50,000 of them in the language. Tonal system of pronunciation. That is, if you pronounce it without the desired intonation, you may get a completely different meaning. Plus, the hieroglyph does not give an understanding of how the word should be pronounced.

Japanese is a completely confusing language. Firstly, the letter in it differs from pronunciation, secondly, three writing systems, thirdly, you need to learn huge amount hieroglyphs.

The Hungarian language is considered very difficult. It has 35 cases, many vowels, many suffixes. And his pronunciation is quite difficult.

Estonian has 12 cases and many different exceptions to the rules.

The Polish language is also quite difficult. You need to watch your pronunciation, otherwise you may not be understood.

The Icelandic language has many archaic forms that need to be memorized.

There are still a lot of less common languages, which are also very difficult to learn, which should be mentioned.



For example, Eskimo (63 forms of present tense), Chippewa (the language of the North American Chippewa Indians, the language contains about 6000 verb forms), Haida (the language of the Haida people living in the Northwest North America, there are 70 prefixes in the language), Tabasaran (one of the languages ​​of the inhabitants of Dagestan). These languages ​​have entered the Guinness Book of Records for their complexity.



There are other complex languages: Tuyuka (language of the eastern Amazon), Navajo (spoken by bilingual people, there are no published articles on the grammar of this language), Basque (perhaps the oldest language in Europe), Czech, Finnish, Lao, Nepalese , Modern Hebrew, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhalese, Thai, Tamil, Turkish, Vietnamese.

The easiest languages ​​in the world

And the most simple are: Danish, Dutch, French, Haitian, Creole, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish. True, this is the data of American researchers. And they most correctly show the ease of learning a particular language for English-speaking students.

By the way, an interesting thing is that English is not at all considered the most easy language in the world. It has a lot of exceptions, a specific pronunciation, etc. There is an opinion that it became international by accident.